Posted
by
Zonk
on Friday April 22, 2005 @07:35PM
from the as-an-evergreen-state-graduate-i'm-unqualified-to-comment dept.

wallykeyster writes "The Guardian is reporting that a recent study at King's College indicates that the average IQ loss of email users was 10 points (or six points more than cannabis users). Details on The Register as well. The Register has a related story about how computers make kids dumb and an apparent "problem-solving deficit disorder" observed in children who use computers. I thought it was television that rotted your brain?"

My 5 year old son has consistently been called "best in class" and "brilliant student" by his schools' staff - obviously to my pride and joy;-) - being an IT guy, a gamer, as well as a dad, I have always taken a relaxed attitude towards pc use and gameplay. He never really played anything too challenging or involving - a bit of tuxracer, a bit of sonic, etc. Until a few weeks ago, when some of his schoolfriends started playing some more involving games, and he wanted to keep up. "Bionicles" was duly installed, and away he went.

We are now 2 weeks later, and my wife and I just - like, 30 mins ago - finished a discussion about how to remove the game from the pc whilst making it look like an accident.... His schoolwork has plummeted, his teachers are really upset - his concentration is just gone, and he isn't interested in playing, arts, crafts, friends or schoolwork. He is a completely different boy, and its really worrying us.

Make of it what you will, but this gave me a first-hand look at the whole issue, and has me pretty disturbed.

This is an interesting point... I can't really relate to how involved kids get wrapped up in computer games. But what you've said makes a whole lot of sense, maybe it didn't affect my peers as much (I was born in 79) because the games we had were significantly less complicated than the games kids play now.

Man, I can relate. MUDs, BBSing, IRC, there went much of highschool and early college. Especially the early chunk of college since all my CS classes had nice little telnet connections, only when I switched majors (and lost the in-class telnet) did my grades improve.

I broke up with one of my first g/fs because "I was about to level" on Genocide. I spent more time learning how to code on a MUSH (and later a pirated Diku) than I ever sunk into schooling.

I guess now that I'm a mature adult, I can depend of/. to take up all my time. Where would we be without the internet, I don't know, but I am sure that we all would be more productive. (world peace or/.... hmmmmm)

Well, you could stop being so damned afraid of your child and remove the stupid game without staging an elaborate lie to cover up what is a perfectly reasonable act. Will he cry and bitch? Possibly, but maybe you won't raise one of those assholes who wants to call a lawyer as soon as someone tries to deny him absolutely anything.

Sheesh. What in the hell happened to parents just saying "No" instead of treating kids like royalty? This Just In: you can love your offspring while still denying them things, despite what your idiot neighbor claims.

I am only a child of the 70s, but it's certainly a different, wussier, world out there than I remember.

I'm with Oliver. Why you're devising a plan to lie to your child instead of being up front and direct with him is beyond me. My unsolicited advice is simply to teach your child the value of moderation and responsibility; limit his gaming to x hours per day and see how that works out.

I'm with Oliver, but with one addition: tell your son in advance what you are going to do. He will protest and give you a hard time (hold your balls out, man), but he may lose your trust and never forgive you if you unexpectedly destroy the game and his player data.

you can love your offspring while still denying them things, despite what your idiot neighbor claims.

Denying children from being overwhelmed by abundance _is_ the responsibility of loving parents. It's the only way for children to develop a perspective on how the real world operates (most people don't get things simply by pouting about it--they have to work for it).

Limit his time on the game, use it as reward and punishment. If he won't respond to you when he is playing pull the plug out of the wall, it will get his immediate attention. Learn to say NO, don't appoligise for saying NO, and follow through. Your kid will have alot more respect for you in the long run.

I'm a child of the fifties, it may be wussier today but I'm glad bashing your kids has become an unacceptable practice.

Although I tend to agree with the GP posts, I
won't attack you for doing what you considered
best. In fact, you have the right idea in your
stance that kids do not equal small adults...
Despite a century of enormous progress in
developmental and behavioral psychology, it
shocks me how many people still hold that
archaic belief.

I have to ask, though... When you say that
limiting his playtime didn't work, do you mean
that he ignored you and played anyway, or that
reduced playtime didn't bring his academic
performance back up?

If the former, one suggestion - Use a password,
and require it for the screensaver as well, and
don't let the kid know the password. Problem
solved.

It the latter, that should make you suspect that
something has changed other than a mere
game.... You pointed out his age, only 5... At 5,
he doesn't really have a long history of academic
performance to compare against... Two years, at
the most, and two years of "fluff" at that, not
"real" education. Boys in particular (even very
bright ones) often have a hell of a time coping
when the focus of "that place they send me away
to every day" changes from directed-play to
sit-in-a-chair-and-pay-attention-for-six-hours.

So, since the "small adults" theory has no basis
in reality, what does work?

The plain and simple carrot-and-stick. Let him
run around in circles outside for a few hours after
school to get rid of the pent up frustration of
sitting still for six hours, then after supper,
do his homework. When he finishes, dangle the carrot
to make it clear that he can play a game instead of
watching TV (an equally useless passtime, yet most
parents seem to have no problem with letting their
kids veg for four (or far more) hours every night).
If he throws a fit that you won't let him play before
finishing homework, use the stick and punish him in
the manner you see fit (I'd say "spank the little
bastard", but then I'd have the PC-police after me).

Also, keep in mind the meaninglessness of grades.
If he clearly knows the material but the teachers
still complain based on his general behavior, it
doesn't mean some game has magically ruined his
concentration (in fact, research shows that gaming
has the exact opposite effect, vastly extending
attention span in young children)... It means he has
no intention of going along quietly with 13 years of
socialized babysitting, and you will never
convince him to do otherwise.

I think I agree with most of the posts here, especially Oliver's.
I am currently a high-achieving high school junior. I have liked to play games since I started playing MUDs at age 12. However, my parents never felt bad telling me "no". Because my parents were frank in what activities should be my priorities, I learned both to moderate my gaming and to put school work first.
I am now getting the chance to watch my parents do the same to my brother. He followed my lead and started gaming in the last year. My parents are still making it clear that school work must come first. He hasn't yet gotten it, but he will.
Meanwhile, I have friends who were also straight-A, honors students in 9th grade, but who are now B students in regents classes (the lowest level in my school) for six hours of the day, and are Everquest and World of Warcraft grinders for the other sixteen.
I bet their parents would be happier if they had just said "no".

Sheesh. What in the hell happened to parents just saying "No" instead of treating kids like royalty?

People are raised to be perpetual children, and infantilized throughtout their life. Then they knock up their SO, and think that to be an adult, they have to posess a thing called a kid. Rather than realizing its how they raise their kid that determines whether they are adults.

Being a parent is not about gratification from the love of a child. If you need that, get a dog. Being a parent is not about

Before hurling around "back up your opinion" you may consider doing the same yourself. You've presented no evidence that physical punishment harms children when properly applied. I present myself as evidence of a perfectly happy individual, without authority problems and with self-esteem but (I hope) without an overinflated ego, who was smacked when small.
Obviously overuse or inconsistent use of physical punishment will be adverse, just as with any other.

The parents who lie to their own children in order to avoid any emotional interaction with their child are the parents who need to learn. There simply is no way around it.

I've seen families with stronger parents and familes with weaker parents, and it is blatently obvious what the impact on the children is. The weaker parents have children who don't share well, who are difficult to be around, who are difficult to trust, and are generally just little shits all around. The children who have a more balance

AUthoritarian parenting (like the 50s) - still bad. Kids grow up with serious problems with authority. Kids split off, one group becomes criminals, the other group will conform for awhile and then during their midlife crisis completely uproot themselves and start fresh. All will have low self-worth and so forth.

So how do you win?

Um, read Oliver's post?;)

Personally, I think my wife and I are on the riht track. My daughter spent 4 hours rebelling aainst cleaning her room tonight, a typical 20-minute cleaning job. In the process she missed a movie and storytime. She was pretty upset about it and whined a bit about "I can't sleep because I didn't read a story", but it didn't take her long to figure it out. She's starting to come around.:)

Her brother, in contrast, cleaned his room immediately and was done in 10 minutes. He got to watch the movie and had storytime before bed. He also got to play with both his parents a little bit along the way. He's 1 1/2 years younger than his sister. The 1-year old (almost 2) helped pick up a bit too.:)

Children learn from their parents in many ways the parent doesn't expect. The problem with "permissive" parenting - if the parent has broad values then not necessarily any problem, but in this sense I think the meaning is submissive parenting - avoid confrontation even when you think the child is wrong. In this case, the child will learn the same pattern of behaviour, and will grow to not argue his case as a teenager. This leads to the low self-esteem etc, that you're talking about.

The authoritarian approach? Your child will learn that power equates to right, that the ability to punish replaces the need to justify.

The middle approach? Always speak up, never act without explanation. Listen to child so that child learns to use reason to get her way. Above all, avoid yelling and other resorts of force / power. 'Cause very soon, your child will be using the same techniques on you.

You're saying that overly permissive parenting leads to lowered self-esteem? You lost me, there. If, as a sibling post to this one said, what you mean by permissive parenting is submissive parenting, avoiding confrontations with the kids, it seems like you'd end up with spoiled children, with inflated self-esteem, too damn full of their own egos.

People with low self-esteem aren't a threat or a problem to anyone but themselves. It's people with inflated self-esteem [psychologytoday.com] that are the problem.

Do you limit his play time? Or did it evolve quickly into "Where's Timmy? Playing his game?"

I hate, absolutely _hate_, laying blame on parents, but after working as long as I have in IT at a school district I can see that children are mirrors of their parents' behavior.

That said, I think what you need to do at this point is take your son, sit him down, and start involving him in reading. Either that or grt him out away from computers for a bit. Anything to keep him from becoming some kid who lets extran

I think this is the big thing: educational games are dead, except for stupid multimedia treehouse and barbie games. Puzzle games are no longer things like The Incredible Machine and Lemmings, that actually give you _problem solving_ skills, but twitch-puzzles like Tetris and Chu-Chu Rocket (which are fun by their own right, but not mind-expanding).

You should have a look at Enigmo [pangeasoft.net] from Pangea. It is originally a Mac game, but available for PC too now.

Fabulous.

My daughter is 2 and I'm waiting until she is old enough to play it. I'm also busily writing some Logo routines to draw pretty stuff that she will be able to tweak about whenshe is much older... if she wants to.

I hate, absolutely _hate_, laying blame on parents, but after working as long as I have in IT at a school district I can see that children are mirrors of their parents' behavior.

Why do you hate blaming parents so much? It's their job to raise their kids, and nearly every problem a child has can be directly related to his parents' (lack of) parenting. The original poster is a perfect example. Rather than addressing the problem, he's scheming with his wife to "accidentally" remove the game. What's his son going to learn from this? That it's okay to neglect his responsibilities (even at 5 years old, you have them -- education, playing, being a kid)? That mommy and daddy are real klutzes with the computer, so he should start learning how to hide what he's doing? In this case, it may or may not be the parents' fault that the kid got so wrapped up in the game (it probably is -- they didn't limit his play time, or set down ground rules), but if they go through with the planned course of action they are absolutely responsible for what that teaches the child.

It's not my job to parent your kids, nor is it the government's job, nor teachers, school administrators, day care employees, etc. It's your kid, you teach him how to be responsible. If you can't handle that, perhaps you should reconsider being a parent. Harsh? Sure. But throwing more tax dollars at poorly parented children isn't going to solve the problem, either. You have to fix the problem, and the problem is usually the parents (or parent, in more and more cases).

My son is about a year old. My wife became pregnant before we got married, so you might say he was unforeseen.

There are two things about watching people parent that never cease to amaze me.

The first is how many people can rise to the occasion and do a good job when it is not what one would expect of them.

The second is how otherwise intelligent and responsible people can completely fail to take responsibility for how their actions affect their children.

So I say that parenting is never something that people are ready for. It is something that people can rise up to do. But before you have a child of oyur own, you are simply unprepaired.

Now on to the rest of the discussion. The metaphore I use in looking at this is that of social laws and rules. If the government were to "accidently" confiscated our cars or our houses, we would have a fit and rightly so. If, however, this was based upon a conviction in a court of law, it would be different. One of the most difficult aspects of family building is focusing on how to create a system of rules which helps foster growth. These rules need to be in the open, and easily understood.

If your child is playing too many computer games, first talk to your child about it. Set rules regarding when your child is allowed to play the game and under what circumstances. If this fails, let the child know that the game will be uninstalled. Give, say, three opportunities for failure. If the game is abused such that the conversation must repeat three times, the game gets uninstalled. Make sure that this is all done in the open and that the system is transparent.

One of the most difficult things to do sometimes is to have enough respect for your kids to think that maybe they actually need to know why you are doing something.

I recently bought a computer for my 14 year-old son as a birthday gift. I also bought him a router so that his mother (my ex-wife) could configure it appropriately. She still hasn't set it up (she VPNs into a network and often works from home) and she dictates when he can get on the net. I have no problem with her decision since she has to deal with him regularly and I'm not so sure that unrestricted net access is such a good thing for him.

I imagine there is some sort of hardwired instinct at work here. I don't know the Bionicles game, but many games are so complicated now that they require complex thinking skills. There may be some internal switch which says, "I am doing this important task [e.g. hunting], so I should turn off my learning/artistic desire switch in order to focus on the task at hand."

Even games like Unreal Tournament or Grand Theft Auto require a lot of different brain processes and instincts to "survive." But these games ma

You think that's bad...
2 of my college friends dropped out of college because of Everquest. They spent ALL day playing it and not going to class because they felt that they needed to keep up with their guild members, etc. They were on scholarship, which they lost. Eventually they dropped out of college. It's sad but games can be very addicting, just like a lot of things. Games are designed to be addicting, that's how they make their money. I'm guilty of being an addict as well, but to cycling. The good thing is that when I'm cycling, I'm in so much pain that there's a limit to how much I do it. Computer games, on the other hand, has no such mechanism. I think the pain comes later when the rest of your life suffers as in the case of my friends. So maybe instead of immediate reward and delayed punishment, they should make it delayed reward and immediate punishment, like cycling:-) Then again, a game like that will never sell.

I had college friends who dropped out because of MUDs... couldn't stop playing them, even to the detriment of their schoolwork. It was easy to find them, though. They never left the computer labs..

Of course all I call that is a lack of discipline. Like this "brilliant" kid. Tell him _NO_ once in a while so he can get used to it when he grows up... and maybe he won't be Everquest (or MUD) fodder.:)

Spoiled little brats... getting all that they can possibly want, and appreciating none of it.

Games addictive? I don't buy it. It sounds to me like your friends don't have an addiction problem, they have a self-discipline problem. They want to forego stuff that is important but hard in favor of stuff that is entertaining and easy. It's a simple matter of short-term gratification (another level) versus long-term satisfaction (a degree). That paper can always be written tomorrow, one can always cram for the next exam, but my guildmates need me NOW!

If I were a betting man, I would wager that if they weren't invovled in Everquest, they would have found some other diversion to consume their time and cause them to drop out of college.

The nature of addiction is the inability to curb the constant urge for self-gratification. Its not PHYSICAL addiction, but psychological addiction is just as debilitating and almost difficult to beat.

There is not much difference between snorting cocaine and shooting heroin to feel good, than watching TV or playing video games to get those same endorphins. (Or heavy physical activity, for that matter, but I never believed in runner's high.) The only difference with self-medication is that your brain is causing those drug effects to occur, and the body is self-regulating enough not to inflict permanent physical damage or cause severe physical withdrawal.

The problem is not merely "self-discipline". Its deeper. There is no reward for denying gratification if the long term goal doesn't provide satisfaction. I feel sorry for people that busted their ass to get an engineering degree in the '80's, only to find out afterwords society lied to them about job availability. I feel similarly about pre-meds back in the '80s. (I don't feel sorry for them now, because the writing is on the wall about how relatively crappy the medical profession has become.) The key thing is that society has been feeding everyone a line a bullsh*t about hard work and responsibility will allow you to achieve your happiness (see Fight Club). Don't get me wrong, those traits are required, you'll be better off financially, and you still may end up happy. But its been mythologized, and soon American society will be crashing into reality.

Midlife crisis occurs when people have plugged themselves into this life pattern because people told them they should live this way, only to realize at that point, it doesn't make them happy or feel fulfilled.

The problem is a crisis of faith, or purpose. You can't really beat that into people. Most people are pushed into adult behaviors by the desire to conform, or get ego gratification. Once those stop being motivators, there's not really any rationale to get a job better than station attendant if playing video games makes you adequately happy.

Everquest, MUDS, etc are all skinner boxes. You eventually get a reward for lots of work and it becomes compulsive. Toss in the social aspect and it can be serious. MUDs had me for a while, hurt grades I guess but not by too much, but it certianly was compulsive, and to the outsider completely and utterly weird.

I can totally relate passthecrackpipe. (odd name for such a....umm...mature post). My little brother is 16 now and ever since he was about 11 or 12 he's had a problem with letting computer games controlling his life that has gotten progressively worse and worse. Although he does keep up with his grades (because if they plummet he knows he will lose his computer priveledges until they come back up). Try that with your son, that is remove or severely restrict his gaming time until he gets those grades up. I think that would help solve your problem.

But it won't end there, let me assure you. Even though my brother keeps his grades up, he spends *all* his free time playing games, reading about games, and pretty much nothing but games. He doesn't go outside. He doesn't socialize with others. He just wants to get online and "pwn pplz with hiz 1337 skillz". (-_-) In the past my parents had been pretty damn lax about this, even though they knew it was a problem, and I insistently pressured them to make him do something else, anything else but play games! I'm afraid that this problem is only going to grow exponentially for each generation as kids start to grow up on games and let them control their lives. As parents, guardians, or whatever you are, I urge you all to remind your younger family members that games are great, but they should try doing other things with their lives. Otherwise, they will never know how many great things they are capable of doing in this world.

I know you have a large amount of replies already, but this hits home since I was a young gamer.

First of all, 5 years old? I wasn't even in kindergarten at five. I wouldn't worry about a 5 year old's studies so much anyway.

Well I'll get to the point. Games takeover people's lives because of lack of motivation. Teach him why he needs to do his schoolwork, and ensure the reward is high enough. When I was young and gaming, that was my problem. Take away his video games and he'll be hopping the fence to

If he's playing so much that it's affecting him that adversely, a simple solution is to limit his time. My kids play computer games, GameCube and GameBoys too, but their grades have never suffered because of it. Homework comes first. When we decide time's up, time's up. No arguing (maybe some grumbling, but that doesn't change anything). You can let them have fun without being a doormat.

I think this kind of misses the point. Your son has acquired functional skills for manipulating the computer. This does not correspond to a gain in IQ points. In fact, TFA suggests that children who spend time (and by extension brainpower) on gaining these skills tend to lose IQ points as measured by our standard methods.

Now, there's a major argument to be made that these skills in current society may actually be much more valuable than the lost IQ points (which, in my opinion, have dubious value anyway), but it's really a different issue. Point is, you can't say your son is gaining IQ points faster than other children because he knows how to minimize windows.

I would like to volunteer for your research. Maybe we can get a grant to do more research into the culmulative factors like 'the simultaneous effects of drugs and marijuana om the IQ' or does reading e-mail during sex while smoking marijuana lower your IQ or just cause fires?'... The research posibilities are endless and just as meaningful as this first round of research.

"pass the pop3...dude.."
"Police arrested a local ISP for running an SMTP"
"That's one less scum off the face of this earth, we can't have these kids propigating this brain-numbing garbage," says Officer Joe Johnson, "Not in my town"

Not to mention, the IQ drop is a government myth. [erowid.org] The cherry-picked studies which show this have some seriously flawed methodology like graduate students tested against off-the-street stoners. If you can keep producing results that show marijuana in a negative light you can some nice grants from the government.

As someone who has dealt with diagnosing and fixing a lot of computer related problems caused by relatives who don't have a clue and by my own tinkering, I'd say that PCs sharpen your problem solving skills. Or maybe they're unrelated, and PC skills are just a reflection of one's problem solving abilities.

I once read that using a computer is a test of one's ability to follow directions. Probably true, but I do also think that maintaining a computer in an environment of changing hardware and software is a t

Sure the internet can make you more intelligent if you spend your time reading Wolfram Mathworld, Scientific American, Project Gutenburg texts, and Wikipedia...but who does? Is the back-forth banter here really intelligent? Seems more like smalltalk. The bloggers are just writing about each other. Everquest is pulling people away from reality entirely.

TV's been doing the set-up work for years... gently prepping us... slowly inundating us with live audiences, then laugh tracks, then nothing but our own morbid sense of humor... Even the History channel seems to have lost it's verve in the face of such enlightening TV as Who's Your Daddy?

Oh oh oh -- did anyone see that Seinfeld re-run last night? When Kramer had the oil tanker inven-- Hey, email fram Nambikstan... all caps, must be important!

that allowing computers to constantly shift your focus from one thing to the other, impairs your long term ability to focus on one thing and imprint it on your brain in serious depth.

My prescribed solution (IMHO)? A weekend per month secluded from all electronica, preferably with someone else, along with non-technical books, and one or more chess sets. Or better yet, a program once a month that provides a rewarding experience that reinforces one's ability to just **focus**.

that allowing computers to constantly shift your focus from one thing to the other, impairs your long term ability to focus on one thing and imprint it on your brain in serious depth.

I haven't read the study beyond the linked article, but personally I suspect that the whole problem extends far beyond email use.

Western society is built on distractions, and on interrupting people from what they're doing, much of which is to do with commercialism. For instance:

Television, which the vast majority of people base their lives around, interrupts everything for commercial breaks every few minutes. People are being asked to concentrate for short spurts of time and then switch off or do something else.

The standard formula for popular music is to produce songs that last about three to five minutes. Commercial radio often plays one song at a time, and then encourages listeners to switch modes by playing commercials. Some albums are still designed so that the entire album is an experience to listen to, but with others the disjointed focus of the music still completely changes between tracks. Compare this with older forms of classical music, for instance, for which it's common for some movements and symphonies to last tens of minutes or hours.

Modern communication devices such as telephones, especially mobile phones, encourage people to be on demand all the time to deal with new problems and tasks immediately and as they arise. Technologies such as SMS encourage people to divide their attention even further, having a conversation in many very short messages and often when also doing something else. Compare this with some time ago when it would often be common to be out of contact except for particular times. (eg. Reading snail mail, or arriving at the office.)

Personal computers, at least the ones that most people owned, used to be very bad at multitasking. This made it necessary to only run one main application at a time. It wasn't possible to use a computer for word processing at the same time as spreadsheeting, without fully closing down one and starting the other. Today, typical workstations allow people to easily and frequently switch between many tasks at once.

It doesn't surprise me at all that people's attitudes to doing things have been changing quite dramatically, and it seems quite feasible that the effects of this on people's wellbeing could be negative. Emails popping up and being addressed are just an extension of everything else that's been happening with advances in technology and societial attitudes.

I would love a tool, similar to the one that you suggest, that encourages being able to focus on things. I'm not entirely sure how it could be guaranteed to work, though. To me, many of the possible problems seem to be embedded quite heavily in the way that society now works.

Meanwhile, I think I'll try forcing myself to concentrate more by shutting down lots of other things while I'm browsing slashdot. It's a shame they're so easy to start up again.

Okay, somebody needs to do a posting series where the more they post, the stupider they be typin CAUSE ALL THIS eMAILING MAKE ME STOOPID AND SLASHDOT IS KEW COZ I GOT KARMA NAD MAKE FIRST POOPY^H^H^HPOST!

This is only the result of using M$ applications and playing games in stead of studying/reading.
No big deal... As it was previously stated, "it just works!" and nobody cares how and why. On the other hand, if you don't spend too much time playing, what else can you do but work/study ? When I say games, I don't mean mindgames, I mean something like violent RPG's / Shoot'em up.

Ok... So I'm blaming it on Microsoft... this is the only corporate name I can think of at this time but you get the point: Apps for

How in the world do you correct for all other factors and then go on to claim that computers make kids less intelligent than having 500 books in the household? Adding together all my fiction, reference, and technical books I barely break the 200 count. Aren't they really saying that kids in more affluent homes are smarter? And are they factoring in easy access to public libraries?

I avoid tv as well. I watch maybe 6 hours a month, all of that from DVDs. My problem with purchasing books (aside from reference material) is that after reading it once, I remember it for a long time. At most I'll reread it maybe a year or two later, after I've forgotten most of the details. As a result my shelves are full of only the books I really, really enjoyed.

I also grew up with the habit of visiting the local public library for most of my book needs; I just can't justify paying money for something m

I always thought IQ was a relatively static thing. Obviously, a person's intelligence changes over time, but IQ is adjusted for age. A 10-point drop in IQ means the person would have actually lost some kind of mental capacity.

I don't buy that at all.

Most likely, the added distractions in these people's lives just made the test more difficult for them. I highly doubt that these people actually became dumber. As someone mentioned earlier, this is most likely just some scientist making his data fit h

I MEEN OMG!!! DOES U LOSE ALL THOOSE QI PTS 4 EMALING LIKE THIS!?!?!?!?!?!
Seriously, If you are going to use e-mail like a retard then it probably does make you stupid. For some reason people seem to think that because it's an e-mail grammar, punctuation and spelling can go out of the window. It's just like text messaging short hand. I try where possible to write e-mails, text messages and instant messages with reasonable grammar, spelling and punctuation. It takes a little more time, but you soon learn to type faster and more accurately because of it.
There was a case in Britain not long ago where a student wrote an entire essay for their GCSE's (exams for 16yr olds) in txt message short hand. I believe that the sudden proliferation of new means of communication (txt messages, e-mails and IMs) mean that children learn txt short hand before learning grammar or typing skills. This means that they end up with some ugly short hand with no spelling required (since anything in the ballpark will let the reader know roughly what you're trying to say) and no grammar skills. Since most of them will be using txts and IMs before actually studying them in class it's no wonder that the fail to learn the correct way of doing things.

is revolting. If you're naturally lazy or stupid and you use the computer, play video games, email obsessively, or smoke pot to excess, yes, you're going to get caught in it and probably get stupider over time.

But if you're naturally smart or motivated, the opposite is true. I've known people that smoked pot all through college and graduated early with amazing grades. I'm sure amongst the people you know, you can think of the video game addict that gets all A's and the video game addict that flunked out years ago.

These things are just enablers. That's why, especially with pot, you should be of sound mind and body before you turn the machine on or pack the pipe. It makes the difference between expanding your mind and escaping from it.

When computers arrived on the scene, everyone noticed them for their potential, just as they had for radio and television, and just as they did for the internet.

It's not that the potential isn't there for any of the technologies, but humanity has a governor, just like the Briggs & Stratton on my old go kart. It's called the 'Lowest Common Denominator.' One individual can reason in a unique manner that can advance the frontiers of human understanding, while a mob is well known for its inability to reason except in the most primative manner. The more connected we become, the more LCD we are tied to. The technology is inevitably bent to the will of the masses, regardless of the vision of the few.

Properly used, a search engine has the potential to function as an intelligence amplifier, but that way requires hard work and a singular vision which reaches outside the common vision. It's so much easier to just kick back and go with the flow. But each of the things that really changed the world were brought about through the individual thoughts of one person, who eventually shared it with a small group. For lack of a better term, an outsider, separate from the common environment; but somehow capable of seeing something that no one else was able to see and to carry through and realize.

So, for the vast majority of those out there who unconsciously embrace mediocrity, being dumber is just another wave of the cool. While those of us who seek truth on a Friday night, discuss the realization of the possible. They're just a tool. They can help the smart get smarter, and the dumb to get dumber. Depending on what you were after in the first place. It is all a matter of choice.

I guess that explains why I walk around the house in the morning and feel like I'm in a permanant vegetative state.

Seriously though, when I graduated from high school, just a mere 18 years ago, we had no such things as cellphones, and gadgets and doohickies and whatnot to distract us from the all important task of learning.

As for computers, too much emphasis is placed nowadays on being able to 'use it' and not enough on why one needs to use it in the first place. Until probably as recently as 10 years ago, there were still books and libraries to go to, but now everything is geared toward breeding a generation that can't be bothered with actually working for the answer, and education in 2005 requires internet access in the home. You need to do a book report on subject whatever, google-search, read up on it, keep doing a search until you find someone who has already solved the problem for you, then do the report. That to some is learning. There is a distinctive difference between a 'college' and a 'university' and one teaches you 'things', the other teaches you how to 'think'. When it comes to learning, it's essential to reinvent the wheel, again and again, and again until reinventing the wheel is as natural as breathing. The only way to make smarter people is to make them think for themselves. By getting someone to crack open a book and do some reading on the facts and only the facts, it gives the reader a chance to think out the problem in their mind rather than accept whatever opinion on the subject they happen to come across.

I look at the university entrance exam my dad wrote when he applied and in all honesty it's so far over my head, I have no idea what the question is asking. There seems to have been a pretty serious slip in mental discipline over the decades, computers and TV are only adding to the problem.

Also, I challenge anyone to find a child (under 18) who will primarily use the computer for actual work (study) as opposed to playing games, instant messaging and other such activities. The life of today's teen hardly requires a storm of neural activity anymore, so it's no big surprise to me that there's an apparent "problem-solving deficit disorder" observed in children who use computers.

I have trouble buying this.
I think a more important question is whether IQ and academic grades are a true measure of intelligence in general.
Moreover just because the people in the study used email, it does not mean that email is the cause for their drop in IQ score.

Intelligence has no specific definition. Some people might say that being able to make people laugh is a form of intelligence, for example.

IQ measures a very narrow set of skills which aren't massively useful in real life. You'll get much further in life by being influential in social situations, or by being able to make good decisions for example.

It seems that the temporary loss of IQ test skill was purely due to the questions being popped up at random intervals.

I wrote my MA thesis ( link ) [mandelinople.com] on a related subject, computers and writing. Though more geeky than most teachers, I firmly believe that computers have no place in the education curriculum. Now, as part of a technology core, or school-to-career, or electives, fine. But absolutely nowhere near a core classes. Okay, a little bias here because I teach history as well as programming, but students need to read books and learn to write the old fashion way. I am not surprised by the results, only that it is taking this ling for some common sense to creep back into the thinking. Considering how much money and effort from all sectors of the industry (including/.'s beloved Apple. disclaimer: I own two ibooks.) has been pumped into education, it should not shock anyone the level of beholdeness to technology that permeates our schools. For far too many teachers, a project is now powerpoint, and the lab is a week off. I really do want to scream.

I will forever be greatful to 2 excellent high school teachers I had (in public school no less!), 1 in math (pre-calc, calc) and 1 in chemistry (chem1 and chem2AP). They wouldn't let us use calculators for anything, not on tests, not on homework, no where. This forced us to get good at doing all sorts of mathmatics in our heads, and to come up with creative solutions if we couldn't remember the specific function/equation to apply to a problem.

I often times would have to work around some equation I couldn't remember and basically derive the equation from smaller building blocks. This gave me a much greater understanding of the actual processes going on. This kind of problem solving/understanding completely disappears when children can use calculators to simply "get the right answer", but the important thing in the maths and sciences is not necessarily the answer, but the process of getting there, and the ability to problem solve, which has completely disappeared in US middle and high schools.

(according to my relatively uninformed theory) basically you can think of the the visual processing system as a set of imaging filters connected to a collection of non-linear discriminators. the filters are intrinsically geometric because that is the optimal configuration for multi-aspect target recognition -- an optimal pattern reached by evolution, learning or some combination thereof. (its also interesting to note that the facial recognition subsystem is -not- multi-aspect, it only works when faces are

Simply put, i did not spell check that, and no, i hardly ever use email, mostly forums.

never ceases to amaze me. You can't be bothered to take a moment to make sure you've expressed yourself coherently. Apparently, holding down the shift key to capitalize the personal pronoun 'I' anywhere other than as the initial letter of a sentence is an imposition. Instead, you expect thousands of people to expend the mental effort to navigate the minefield of your w

I forgot to bring up the most important point of that post. That exemplar of journalism called the Register then claims computers have made kids perform worse in school.

The reality is that kids accomplish less in school than in previous years is because American public schools are declining in educational quality, not that the kids are using computers. Public schools when I was growing up were already neglecting non-curicula specific training. There were articles in the late '80s and early '90s critical